He was holding an apple in his hand, a bite taken out of it. He gave it to her, when he first saw her. They were five. He handed her a pear in high school. Take a bite, she told him, then took it and left. Years later, they found each other in Paris. Her, a painter on her first showcase, him, the IT guy with a passion for art, who wordlessly offered her a bitten quince. Other showcases followed, other countries, other fruits, all of them bitten and wordlessly offered. In China, he awaited her with a kiwi. Peeled. Don't bite it, she said. Today I will bite it, and you will show me all you've been keeping from me.
(Translated by Bianca Ioana Prisecaru / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In June 2023, the group has 11,430 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, Luchian Abel, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
